Sugar asked to help set up credit adjudication service

Enterprise champion Lord Alan Sugar has been called on by the government to get directly involved in its efforts to improve the flow of credit to SMEs.

Sugar (pictured) has been actively working with the current government in a business advisory role but will take a place on a government advisory board that will be tasked with setting out the responsibilities of the credit adjudicator.

The credit adjudication service was one of the main measures
set out in the recent Budget by the Chancellor Alistair Darling with an aim of helping those small businesses that had been turned down for credit with a third party to turn to.

Sugar will be involved with setting up the credit adjudication service and once established it will hear cases that have been referred by the Financial Intermediary Service, where an SME might have been unfairly denied credit.

The task force will also be involved with setting out the skills andexperience needed by those who will be recruited to work on the creditadjudication scheme.

Lord Mandelson, Business secretary, said that Sugar along with outgoingFSB chairman John Wright and former Lloyd's TSB deputy chief executiveMike Fairey are also on the board.

"Lord Sugar, Mike Fairey and John Wright have decades of experience inbanking, business and enterprise. They understand the criticalimportance of new finance and credit flow to the growth of small,innovative companies," he said.

Sugar of course made his name selling computers under the Amstrad andViglen brands and has become a TV personality as a result of hisinvolvement with the Apprentice TV series.

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